Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (2024)
★★★
This review may contain spoilers.
it was a pretty good movie, a lot of fun, which is all I ever really want from the sonic movies, some cool sonic fun stuff, I do have some thoughts and they are gonna sound negative in nature but I present them out of love for Team Sonic, I do feel like this story could really really work and work super well, if the structure of the story were a bit different just a few key things expanded on and a scene or two moved over a bit that wouldn't mess with the story that I want them to tell and more enhance the story they are trying to tell.
- I liked all the stuff with Maria, though I do feel like the structural edit here has it's weekends, during Shadows escape for example we get short flashbacks to understand who Shadow is before the tank fully empties, I think this gets rid of the tension for the scene, imagine if in between his fighting of the guards the flashbacks to Maria were playing, while providing an intriguing backdrop for the fight scene, it is set in the story that they were trying to tell, Shadow wants revenge for what Gun did to Maria, so instead of ruining the tension and build up of this big bad guy who is escaping, which is us the audience perspective, instead of him escape and in between his fight with them in quick succession have his story told in a mini-palate, it's clear that they are using this opening as a mini-teaser / cold open for the story that is going to be told in large
- I do wish that we got more moments with her in the lead up to her death , she gets a quick montage, that is about it which is kind of disappointing, I wanted to see more of why Shadow had formed this bond with her, what did she do / say to help him feel understood, essentially I am saying that we needed much more quiet moments like the stars sequence in order for her death to resonate more emotionally, maybe in the lead up all we see is the good moments that shadow remembers, we see Walters shoot Maria from Shadows perspective, then Walters tells that lie about his power being to strong and blowing up the building to Team Sonic and then after that we find out that actually the truth was actually a bit in the middle this whole time.
- love literally everything with Jim Carrey and Lee Majdoub, they are such a power duo with such great chemistry, that final scene where Robotnik says good by to Stone is infinitely more emotional than most things with Maria; they give some power house performances in this movie both Majdoub and Carrey carry this on an emotional level.
- I wish that the anger thematically linked back a bit more with Sonic, it felt like it was mentioned, then expanded a bit when Tom is "fight for his life" and then dropped, Sonic needs to deal with this underlining anger that he has that has been surface touched in 3 sonic movies but never truly touched on
- for this to work for me, there needed to be more parallel's between Sonic and Shadow, though there are some and those are explored pretty great, we needed more, Tom needed to be "fighting for his life" sooner in the movie, it would tie back to that theme of Teamwork that they are trying to touch on in this film, along with Parallel Shadows arc for Sonic, the revenge consumes him he is about to fight Knuckles, this si the first time where the stakes are at 100 percent and then it's just kind of over, another one is coming and I hope they pick this thread up.
- that being said there are a lot of parallel's between Sonic and Shadow and Long Claw and Maria that I picked up on and those were nicely done.
- The tone for the film is weird going for a huge amount of jokes but also a dark storyline where you kill a kid can be a bit tough to juggle less jokes would have helped they feel like they interrupt the tone, I know it's a kids movie so though I am not giving it a pass and I don't necessarily agree I do understand that they need to have these jokes so that that the subject matter isn't too dark, but much like the Lion King or Monsters Inc, you can explore some pretty heavy things in a kids movie before they feel like they are too heavy for kids to process.
- it's a fine tone just not a perfect one, it's got is problems but nothing some more tight editing couldn't fix for sure.
- the fight scene at the end is just a dragon ball fight, I am not saying it's a good or a bad thing but it's a dragon ball fight, it's framed like a dragon ball fight, down to the camera flying with the character and them punching aspect, it was cool.
- the framing is up in this one, the environments that they chose to set shots in are pretty cool, Shadow set in the rain, the scene at the collapsing towers (I don't know what that place is called) where shadow stands on top of the towers, towering over golden sonic, that was cool.
- the models for the character look great, when the sun sets on earth and they are on the moon it was so beautiful to look at, the shadows and lighting on Shadows character model in particular was stunning.
- I liked Knuckles in this and I liked the knuckles spin off that gave him a lot more character depth I hope we get one for tails because they feel under used and under appreciated, which is most of tails character lol.
- second to last thing, the dialogue is a bit weird, especially with Walters, the dialogue that he says at that Chao Garden feels so heavy handed and delivered or written a bit wonky
- Chao Garden has a song that plays right before a fight, why isn't that song playing during that fight that would have been a cool fight scene.
- the scene under the stars with Maria and the scene with Sonic and Shadow on the moon are the best scenes in the film, the pacing, tone and the joke or two that are in these scenes are so perfectly timed and paced, there payoff that they have for the larger story is perfect and so much more, if more scenes in this movie where like this this would be one heck of a movie, but I do like what we got and ended up with, i am not mad nor disappointed, just a person who likes movies.
